"Arm Wrestling with My Father" by Brad Manning and "Shooting Dad" by Sarah Vowell

As we get older we tend to reflect more on our life and get our priorities together. We tend to realize who and what is important, the people who mean the most to us and the ones we can’t live without. Who would those significant individuals be for us? For most people it would be their parents. In the poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, and “My Mother” by Ellen Bryant Voigt, both writers express their emotion towards a parent. The poems are similar in many ways simply because they share a parent child relationship, they are also vastly different. “My Fathers Song” is a poem about a son who lost his father and is grieving and referring back to old memories, reflecting on their past and the wonderful time he had with his father. “My Mother” on the other hand is a poem about a daughter who lost her mother and is having a difficult time coping as she reflects on the decisions she made as a child and how that affected her relationship with her mother. Despite their differences, the two poems share a true connection of love towards their parent. Most notably “My Fathers Song” and “My Mother” differ in the relationship with their parent, the settings in which the memories they hold of their parents take place, and who they are mourning over, yet the two have a strong emphasis on love.

She still uses the rhetorical technique of juxtaposition but she adds more techniques to it which explains her differences with her and her father. She talks about her different hobbies she has from her dad, “all he ever cared about were guns, all I ever cared about was art” (Vowells). The way the author describes her thoughts towards guns is totally different from her and her sister. In paragraphs 9-13 she writes about her attitudes toward guns and how her sister loves more than Vowell does. She uses parallelism and pathos to discuss about how Sarah dislikes the use of guns but her sister adores it. Explaining on how her own experience of guns around her house are horrible for society. Although, she does not seem to get along with her dad she does towards the end of her story talk about how her relationship towards him has changed into a positive

The relationship between the two fathers and the two sons is a very important theme in this book. Because of their different backgrounds, Reb Saunders and David Malters approached raising a child from two totally different perspectives.

Everyone has a father. No matter if the father is present in a child’s life or not, he still exists and takes that role. A father has a major impact on his child whether he knows it or not, and that impact and example shapes the child’s perspective on life, and on love. The authors, Robert Hayden and Lucille Clifton, share the impact of their fathers through poetry, each with their own take on how their fathers treated them. The poems “Forgiving My Father” and “Those Winter Sundays” have significant differences in the speaker’s childhood experiences, the tone of the works, and the imagery presented, which all relate to the different themes of each poem.

The choices and decisions made control our lives and build our future. Regardless of whether individuals see it or not, the choices did influence today, impact our tomorrow. Once a choice made, the actions play out, and the results convey; at that point, must choose the option to live with those outcomes. In the short story "The Father," the author, Hugh Garner utilizes character development of John Purcell to demonstrate that one's irresponsible choices made have the ability to jeopardize an essential relationship in one's life.

Sarah Vowell’s “Shooting Dad” discusses the relationship between a daughter and father. Engaged in a lifelong opposition to her father’s politics, interests, and his work, Vowell discovers just how much she actually has in common with him. Throughout her adolescent years, she was her father’s polar opposite. Her room was littered with musical instruments, albums, and Democratic campaign posters while her father’s, an avid gunsmith, was strewn with metal shavings and Republican party posters. Amongst all this conflict, Vowell found that they had more in common with each other than either of them realized. As she looks back on her childhood, Vowell explains that although it may take a while to see and understand others’ perspectives, once you

Relationships between people can change lives forever. For instance, the relationship between a parent and a child is one of the most important ones because that is where our consciousness about love, trust, and assurance comes from. Depending on the relationship, it can either benefit or negatively affect the child’s future, since little children always look up to their parents as role models. In the novel, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless is negatively affected by his relationship with his parents. Chris McCandless’ parent, on the outside, appear to want Chris to be a successful student. Meanwhile, in the inside appearance, especially Walter, was an abusive father. This reflected a double life and could cause a devastating

Although single parenthood is on the rise in homes today, children still often have a father role in their life. It does not matter who the part is filled by: a father, uncle, older brother, grandfather, etc...; in almost all cases, those relationships between the father (figure) and child have lasting impacts on the youth the rest of their lives. In “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” Jimmy Carter tells the audience no matter the situation with a father, hold onto every moment.

What would be a better expression of father’s love? Squeezing each other’s fists till strips of tendons bulge out? Or wrapping arms around each other for a warm embrace? In “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” Brad Manning experiences a change in his father’s expression of love; from arm wrestling, to a hug. In his story, Manning successfully depicts a boy who admired his father’s masculine strength and grows up to also respect his tenderness and gradually learns to replace his father’s role. His depiction is displayed through alternative comparison, sentence length, analogy, and diction.

In both stories “Arm Wrestling with My Father,” and “Shooting Dad,” the authors use different rhetorical strategies that allow them to exemplify their actual feelings of how they relate to their father’s. They also employ similar rhetorical devices yet are used differently. “Ours had always been a physical relationship, I suppose, one determined by athleticism and strength.” Manning emphasizes how his relationship with his father is very physical and nonverbal. Manning describes the differences in perception of his father’s arms, symbolizing the change in their relationship that was about to take place. Whereas when Vowell states, “if you were passing by the house where I grew up during my teenage years and it happened to be before Election Day, you wouldn’t have needed to come inside to see that it was house divided,” Vowell looks back on her childhood to explain that

“Shooting Dad,” by Sarah Vowell, is about two completely different groups, with contrasting views, that can learn to get along with one another. The reader learns through unsubtle clues that Vowell is a Democrat and her father is a Republican. These collective groups offer completely different viewpoints on many topics, therefore Vowell has a hard time getting along with her father. Vowell is not a strong supporter of guns; however her father has magazine subscriptions devoted to gun ownership, owns many guns, and belongs to an association for gun enthusiasts. Each group had their own areas devoted toward their favorite candidates and used the kitchen and living room for neutral zones. Vowell and her father both share the trait of a messy work area, but in their own way. Her father’s work area, in the shop, consisted of a “museum of death,” that displayed antler from deer that he had previously shot and metal shavings from ammunition covering the surface of the floor. Vowell spent her free time in the music room, which had musical instruments and staff paper covering her available surfaces. Vowell decided her opinion on all firearms when she was six years old. After shooting it once, she knew that guns were not made for her use. She disliked the gun so much that she whispered to it the gun as if it were a possession of Satan as soon as it went off. Years later her father completed a replica of the Big Horn Gun. It was a cannon that was used by white merchants

Both “Arm Wrestling with My Father” and “Shooting Dad” written by Brad Manning and Sarah Vowell, respectively, portrays a damaged and rough relationship that a son and/or daughter holds with his father. Although they both find themselves struggling, they are dealing with different things, Manning is dealing with a physical bounding, while Vowell finds herself handling a more emotional and communicative type of bonding. Eventually, both characters find themselves in a mature relationship over time. The characters had similarities and also differences with their respective father. Throughout the stories, both authors dig into the relationship between child and father and how it can be shaped and changed over time.

Few relationships are as deep as those between child and parent. While circumstance and biology can shape the exact nature of the bond, a child’s caretaker is the first to introduce them to the world. And as they grow and begin to branch out, children look to their parents as a model for how to interact with the various new situations. Through allusion, potent imagery, and nostalgic diction, Natasha Trethewey constructs an idolized image of a father guiding their child through life’s challenges only to convey the speaker’s despair when they are faced with their father’s mortality in “Mythmaker.”

The controversial poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke has spurred passionate academic debate from professors, scholars, and students alike; the imagery, syntax, and diction of the poem clearly support the interpretation that Roethke writes “My Papa’s Waltz” to reminisce on a bittersweet memory with his father. His unclear commemoration has sparked a divide on what the true purpose of the poem is. Some may argue the poem’s purpose is to shine light on the subject of abuse, whereas others believe the father and son were sharing a moment while “roughly playing.” However, the more one examines this piece of literature, it becomes undeniable that the poem portrays a scene of a toxic father-son relationship. Although there are a

The role of a father could be a difficult task when raising a son. The ideal relationship between father and son perhaps may be; the father sets the rules and the son obeys them respectfully. However it is quite difficult to balance a healthy relationship between father and son, because of what a father expects from his son. For instance in the narratives, “Death of a Salesman,” and “Fences” both Willy and Troy are fathers who have a difficult time in earning respect from their sons, and being a role model for them. Between, “Death of a Salesman,” and “Fences,” both protagonists, Willy and Troy both depict the role of a father in distinctive ways; however, in their struggle, Willy is the more sympathetic of the two.